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Leadbolt, Airpush, SendDroid and Google Play

Hey folks, been away for a while. And now, here I am, back. Hope you missed me much. How has July been? Did Leadbolt live up to it's "promise" of improved revenues in July?

Leadbolt - The Ugly

There were some issues with Leadbolt's revenue dropping, posted in many places around the net. We tried asking, and did not get any solid answers from Leadbolt.

The one answer I highlighted previously was that 1 advertiser paused. From the looks of it, many advertisers seem to have run away from Leadbolt.

For the first time EVER I ended a month with Leadbolt not hitting a 4 figure income. FIRST TIME! On my first month with them I already made an awesome amount, and this just is the worst!

Leadbolt responded on the Basic4Android forums that revenues will pick up in July. Well, they forgot to mention that the revenue pick up was for Airpush! (more on airpush below).

How was YOUR July with Leadbolt?

Leadbolt - The Good

Well, a couple of things from my previous highlighting of Leadbolt did get fixed by them. For one, my referrals revenues took a crazy upshot! I made $330 in July from referral revenues (it was about $15 in May, and $90-ish in June). This is more like it. Finally I see my hardwork promoting them and working out their libraries pay off. I wonder if Leadbolt can revisit my previous months revenues and do the adjustments to my referral revenues?

Another thing they fixed was the icons that showed $100 eCPM. Their banners now say earn 10 times more. More than what, I don't know. They are only about 2 times more than admob for me as of now.

Airpush - The Other Good

Yes, after what I've previously said about Airpush being a piece of bullshit, they finally improved. I know some other developers that have showed good improvements from their Airpush revenues. Although nowhere near their bullshit advertised eCPMs, I am pretty happy with the results for July.

August seems to have had an awesome start with Airpush too. If this keeps at current rate, I am gonna make a lot more from Airpush this month than from Leadbolt. Oh boy!

SendDroid - a Challenge?

In my previous writing about Airpush, SendDroid was mentioned in the comments section by me that it is all talk and no result. Well, kudos to Chandler to comment on the article and trying to correct that perception.

I have initially decided to give them a live try out, and I thought I will share the results every now and then here on this blog. Chandler mentioned that they are working out some issues with their network right now, plus the Google Play's new policy on ads require SendDroid to change their SDK.

Oh, but there lies the risk. If SendDroid (and any of the other ad networks) don't properly comply with the ad policy, you know that it is us, developers, who will suffer. A blocked account from Google is almost pretty permanent.

So SendDroid, any guarantee that your ads will not be the reason for my apps being removed from the store? Same question goes out to Leadbolt and Airpush.

Google Play - getting ugly

Well, the new policy is out on ad stuff. There goes content unlockers. Not sure what's the status with notification ads.

Airpush, Leadbolt and SendDroid have all said that push ads are not banned, but really, the terms on Google Play's policy is very very vague. Nobody can really give a solid response to it.

The problem with such stuff is that Google can intepret this any way they want to, and that really sucks.

Also, do note that in-app purchases on Google Play markets can only use their payment methods. How in the 9 hells are developers from unsupported countries to make sales for IAP then? Time to look at iOS!

So...

How's your July been? Have you started removing icon ads and notification ads? What's your take on the new policies?

I think Google needs to open channels to the ad networks regarding content policy. This is not a huge engineering undertaking. Even a simple definitive develop office hours could resolve this, but of course Google and Apple and MS want their cakes and eat it to (be vague with written conditions and harsh and final about their actions).

I had some pretty nice results from leadbolt for July :) A little more than what I got for the month of June. And I know it's only the 3rd of August but so far it's a little low start for me. Hopefully it will pick up.

But to be honest, this new google play policy does scare me. Waking up in the morning to find out that your account has been banned from google play is just a scary scary thought :/

As I mentioned in my other comment, my leadbolt account manager sounded very confident that they are on top of it. I'm hoping that they are true to their words.

Hi Moribito,I tried to publish my apps to Samsung store and I need to say it's a hard thing to do (compared to Google Play). Could you please share your experience with SS store? And Bill, I hope you don't mind :D

Samsung Apps much better than Google play, but you will never have over 250,000 download like Google Play.

For first 3 months of my apps, each of my app downloaded 10 times more in Samsung Apps compared Google Play. Most of my revenue comes from Samsung apps. In fact, most of my apps dont have any ads in Google Play. (It is a strategic move, I wait to gain high install number in Google Play to implement ads).

Just submitted one of my apps. I'll update if it get's approved. I feel like it should because not too long ago I was contacted by samsung's "S Suggest" team asking me if it's ok with me for them to feature my app on "S Suggest"

I've never heard of "S Suggest" before but apparently it's this preinstalled app in samsung phones that suggests users about "hot" apps.

Just wanted to expand on Moribito's comment.Would you say that it is better to publish your apps ad free and then introduce advertising once it reaches a high download rate? Or post your apps with ads right away?

I'll share my experience, as I have tried both, but so far I haven't been able to draw any concrete conclusions. My first (and so far the best) experience with advertising has been implementing ads into a ~100,000-downloads app. It was ad-free, permission-free up until it hit 100,000. As soon as I threw the ads in, the ratings and install rate started dropping. Not everyone installed the update with the ads right away. In fact, there is a good number of users still sitting on the first version of the app.

So I thought, long-term it would be good to include the ads from the start. This way, I would end up with fewer angry users and hopefully fewer bad ratings. I have been using this approach for all my new apps, but the growth in the install rate is significantly slower. So far none of my newer apps reached the same download rate or revenue numbers as my first app.

What are your thoughts on this, guys? Climb to a high download rate and then throw ads in and cope with angry users, or start with the ads from the get-go?

I have had some pretty positive results from Airpush. I am earning roughly 10x more revenue in the past 3 months with them compared to when I was with Admob. I too was concerned with googles new policies but I spoke with an airpush act manager and he confirmed they are releasing their new SDK and it is in full compliance with the new policy, cant wait my august rev

I have to say that I'm becoming a fan of your reviews or rather writings.

To be honest with you, I can understand how it would be a huge concern for developers to correctly place ad units that won't get them banned from Google Play. With that in mind, we are actually going to be positively compliant with all of Google's policies. If we get your app banned, then its just as much of as loss for us as it is for you.

You can rest assured that we will be 100% compliant. That is a guarantee.

Now as for you trying out SendDroid, or anybody else here for that matter, I'd encourage you to try it with the release of the new SDK. It should be out by Wednesday and I will be sure to update you when it is.

I'd choose getting the ads in from the start as a better option. Why not monetize from the start itself?

Of course, not having ads in MIGHT get you a bigger download for a while, but then again, it might not. There is really no guarantee in that.

Hi Chandler,

I'm also a Basic4Android developer (moved to Unity3D now). Although I've previously made a wrapper library to use SendDroid, I think I will wait for your official library instead before I give it a go.

Paid apps is a "luxury" that many developers do not have access to. The same with in-app purchases as Google Merchant is not available in many countries, and that is the only payment gateway allowed by Google.

as a consumer i will not download or purchase anything that has senddroid attached to it. if any of you developers were close i would beat you to a pulp for putting that on my phone. i hope all of you get banned.

Do you guys think it's possible to get your application suspended after you have updated it with the latest policy compliant SDK? A lot of users don't update right away (if ever), so technically the old non-compliant SDK still roams on a lot of devices.

Has anyone had any apps suspended since the new policy came in effect?

Couple of our applications got suspended, and one of the reasons was "Impersonation or Deceptive Behavior". Having looked at the policy, the definition for that category seems to relate to something like ads representing system messages, but it seems that it could really mean anything. Both apps were updated, so we are a little puzzled by what Google meant when listing Impersonation or Deceptive Behavior as a reason for suspension.

The two apps were initially loaded with the pre-policy Leadbolt SDK. We replaced one with post-policy Airpush and updated the other one with post-policy Leadbolt.

I can't say that we've monitored the ads that both agencies sent post-policy update, but I suppose we should will have to be a bit more aware from now on. Especially, since getting to the root of the problem is not the easiest thing with Google's support team.

Those apps had around 60,000 total downloads - making them a considerable number to lose just like that. All our apps our currently unpublished while we try to make sense of this.

On a side note, does anyone know of any viable alternatives to Google Play?

When releasing a new app, it is understood that it will rank far down the food chain. After all, your app is new and unproven just yet.

What Google has done on the Play store is that they have given new app an opportunity to live, a chance to get to a more respectable place in the world of the unknown, the Google Play ranking algorithm.

Good looks go a long way in getting downloads for your apps. I'm a fan of looking out for beautiful app designs. I've looked at so many apps, gotten so much inspiration, but have yet to achieve anything that I can be proud of.

Blame genetics if you must. I am a developer, and although I play the guitar and love music and beautiful art and images (even tried photography once), I suck in the design area. I can give an idea, a design, but cant execute it. I'm a coder damnit!